


my loyal confidant

by dixonbelcourts



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daddy Issues, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Tony Is Trying PNG, me fucking too tbh, pepper is tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 06:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11731032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixonbelcourts/pseuds/dixonbelcourts
Summary: “Marry me.”He says it without thinking, but it feels alright. He doesn’t even expect a decent reaction, no grinning or jumping or screeching ‘Yes, Yes!’ because that’s not his Pepper./canon divergence au messing with timelines + proposal + kids for a commission!!





	my loyal confidant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [generalantiope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalantiope/gifts).



> I got commissioned to write a fic off of effiestrinkets pepperony au based off this http://generalantiope.tumblr.com/post/62622040548/effiestrinkets-au-meme-tony-and-pepper-get ! It was a lot of fun to write tbh

It isn’t something Tony’s used to, the slowness of it all. Having to wait for anything, really. It simply wasn’t in his nature. He got things when he wanted, how he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and then it was gone. As fulfilling as that was. Pepper was different, in the most enjoyable yet somehow utterly _infuriating_ Pepper was loyal though. He knew that much. Even when he thought long and hard (as Tony Stark did with most things that actually mattered) he couldn’t think of a single thing he could do and hadn’t already done that could make the great Pepper Potts leave him completely. Even when his thirty-eighth birthday rolls around and he takes her out to the balcony. Easy enough to take anyone home then, though granted Tony often found that man or woman it wasn’t hard to find anyone on any given night. Yet still, he didn't have any incentive or want to. It seemed to him Pepper had the same idea regardless.

“Thought you’d be busy.” she says, martini glass held between both her hands.

Either it was warm out, or it was him. The fact he couldn’t tell irritated and embarrassed him to no end. Ignoring the crowd of people was easy when he was talking to the only person other than Rhodey who’d put up with him throughout the years. Particularly when she was wearing the blue dress that strapped around her hips. Did he buy that for her? In recent memory he can’t remember buying a thing for her, but he hopes he did.

“Tony,” Pepper says his name more sternly than he wishes she would, hand leaving her glass to tip his head up from staring at her hip.

Even past the faint blushing it was easy to turn on the Tony Stark charm.

“Why would I want that when I could be here?” he grins as he gestures behind him toward the back of the ground, gaze still settling on her. “Half of them are here for the money. The other half to sleep with me, likely. You know how the fans fawn for me.”

Pepper rolls her eyes at him and hides the smirk on her mouth.

“Which one does that make Rhodey?”   
“Here to sleep with me, definitely. Since college I think. Poor guy’s never known how to take a hint.”   
“And me?”

There’s more of an attitude to that comment then, and it actually manages to catch Tony off guard. He takes a moment, blatantly faltering, and takes a sip from his whiskey to stall.

“You, Ms. Potts, are my loyal confidant. The Led to my Zeppelin, the rum to my coke, the - “   
“Jesus, breathe.”   
“I can’t even praise my best employee on my birthday? One would think it’d be vice versa.”

Pepper simply sighs, though he'd caught her smiling before anyway. He’s accustomed to the sight. With everything feeling like it revolved around him, (as it did, both tonight and otherwise) it was easy to keep focus. The cold breeze from the skyline hits his face and whisks back Pepper’s hair from the bun she’d put it in, leaving the stray red hairs down her back. Past his aviators he could still see her exhaustion.

“Go home.” he says.   
“What?”

Tony isn’t surprised at the look Pepper gives him. He’s only surprised she isn’t used to his inane requests at this point.

“Go. Home.” he says, drawling his words over his tongue as if she were a child. “You look like you’re about to jump over the railing.”

With that, he turns his back to the skyline. Pepper shakes her head. Regardless of how Tony wanted to do things, they both knew her decisions were best. But she doesn’t bother to deny the tiredness that so clearly plagued her features.

“If I left you’d be up on the bar throwing money within the hour.”   
“Stay, then. I’m exhausted.”

He was always like this. Regardless how much she could be logical about something, Tony Stark had the ability of twisting it into the thing he wanted most, and in his opinion was best for her. It worked well sometimes with her overworking and him insisting on fun all of the time. It balanced.

Tony looks over his sunglasses continues to insist on how she’s worked too much, pointing out her smudged lipstick and fraying hair. How it’s _his birthday, Pepper,_ all of his ideas are even more amazing than usual. She lets him go on longer than he needs to, leaning her face into one hand and holding her empty cocktail glass in another. Eventually she agrees, because it’s Tony and she knows he won’t stop and she doesn’t feel like taking an Uber home. Aside from the fact she didn’t get him a single birthday gift, other than a pair of cufflinks in the shape of stars she’d accidentally left at home. Abandoning the party is easy. People are so distracted by the extravagance of a Tony Stark party they don’t notice Tony Stark leaving. After years of working for him she felt comfortable enough in the upstairs of the house itself, dropping her heels to the floor and leaving them by the sofa as she knew many women had before.

She’s prepared to take the guest room, slink under Tony’s overly expensive bedding in the uncomfortable dress she had and sleep as well as she could. Tony continues regardless.

“Really don’t have to.” he begins, stepping towards her with his hands in her pockets. “Guest room’s a mess, really. Stained floors, dirty windows. Haven’t had the maid in there in weeks.”   
“You don’t have a maid.”   
“That might be the problem.”

He says everything in such a way that he knew how to manipulate things, turn it to his way effortlessly. It would do him well if he ever took on all the responsibilities of the company, but everyone who knew Tony personally or otherwise knew that wasn’t his fit. Nor was that his actual motive - he was simply just that freewheeling. Pepper rolls her eyes at him as she lets her hair down from her bun.

“Goodnight, Tony.”

She leaves, him calling after her about clothes in the dresser even while knowing she wouldn’t take them. It isn’t until much later and another drink when the party downstairs quiets down that he goes to bed himself. He doesn’t mind spending his birthday night alone. It doesn’t feel like he is.

The morning after is just as much a mess as the night before. He makes breakfast before she comes out of the guest room, but she insists no one but him likes shell in their scrambled eggs and that drinking whiskey in the morning is another thing on the long list of ways he’s irresponsible. But Pepper changes then, doesn’t back away when he’s close and doesn’t try to leave when she woke up to begin with. He feels her breath on his face, hand on his hip, and he flows along with it. Everything seems to come together when Pepper’s mouth met his, and he can’t stop thinking about the how’s and the why’s but he was going to throw himself off a building if he let that ruin his chance.

/

“Tony - “   
“You told me to get to the plane, I’m getting to the plane.”

He says it quickly, stubbornly as he was always prone to, phone between his teeth as he slips on his jacket.

“I’m _pregnant_ .” It comes out urgently, not how she wants it to. As if it’s a disaster. She isn’t sure yet if it is. It’s been two years since they had been honest with each other about their professional relationship, but Tony in the years she’d known him never seemed to be father material, nor was she sure she had the time or energy for a child. The dread bubbling up in her stomach only gets worse when Tony just stares at her. She clutches her clipboard to her chest as if it will hide her stomach and erase the fact all of this was happening. Tony takes his cell phone from his mouth. He seems like he’s trying to gather himself, mouth opening and closing as he goes back to trying to say something and failing. The hangover doesn't help anything, Tony’s head swimming with possibilities and worries while Pepper stood before him. He was in the mindset of building, and only just recently rushing out of the house. Not for this.

“You’re sure?” he asks, eyes bugging out.   
“Yes.”   
“There’s a baby?”   
“ _Yes._ ”   
“In there?”

Tony points both hands towards her stomach but keeps eye contact. Pepper takes one of them, sighing.

“Tony - “   
“We are going to be the best fucking parents.”

/

But then the Ten Rings happen. There’s nothing Pepper can do but watch the news coverage and hear people decide Tony was dead. She remembered Tony’s promises of talking about names and plans as soon as he got back, the excitement in his eyes. It was obvious how important it was to him, both being a father and generally being a better one than his father had been. The worst part was the pity. Eyes were on her all the time. Did they think she couldn’t hear the whispers? All the hushing about Tony as she came into the room, the blatant confusion about whether or not to consider her a single to-be mother.

Then he comes home, and the chaos is even worse. Reporters swarm the area until it’s impossible to see him. It’s the only time she’s been overjoyed to be his partner to the public eye. She’s ushered into the car with no real care for how it’s done. Tony came in a second later. It’s the worst she’s ever seen him (and as long as she’s worked for him, that says a lot). His eyes are bloodshot, scratches covering his face like a tic-tac-toe game. It takes a second for it all to compute, her immediately leaning across the backseat to wrap her arms around him. Tony shrieks still, one arm in a sling and trying to wrap the other one around her. Even after she stops hugging him it doesn’t leave her shoulders.

“Are you alright?” she asks, hand on his chest.   
“Been better.” he replies.

The lack of the usual sarcasm breaks her heart. Rather than mentioning it, or the pregnancy itself yet, she simply takes her hand. Arguing over food and the press conference was pointless, nor did she for once feel like arguing with him. She almost zones into herself and ignores everything happening to set up anything else he needed. Then Tony sets a hand on her stomach and she pauses.

“It’s still a long way off.”

She says it softly, hoping that knowing it will somehow help the aspect of missing time back at home. It doesn’t seem to, Tony instead still just stroking her stomach on top of her pantsuit despite her not even showing yet. She places a hand over his, tipping his head up with the other so he could look her in the eye.

“You had time to think about names?”

/

“Marry me.”

He says it without thinking, but it feels alright. He doesn’t even expect a decent reaction, no grinning or jumping or screeching ‘Yes, Yes!’ because that’s not his Pepper. She stares up at him instead, and it makes him grin. It fades a second later when she drops the arc reactor, the metal bumping against his chest as she has to hold onto his essential life support. It’s then Pepper shrieks, taking the object in her hands and putting the other hand against his chest. Tony gasps, dealing with the pain as he guides her along fixing it.

“A no, then?” It comes out choked and gasping as he tries to relax into being able to breathe again. “Much easier ways to say that.”

Pepper still doesn’t answer, in awe even years into their relationship and months into their pregnancy. Lacking any alarm, Tony slowly sits up and continues talking, hands still clutching his own chest.

“I meant to ask you when I came back.” he starts. “When I was supposed to come back. Wanted to take the time to plan, I guess. Never really thought I would. Doubt you did, either. But I want to. I want to do it right. If I could throw such big things for myself I should’ve been able to do it for you.”

The last sentence is what catches her. It’d been so rare to even hear Tony admit the lifestyle was even just slightly too much, much less disdain it and in honor of her. So rather than doing anything else he takes her hand with one and keeps the other on his chest, simply staring and waiting for an answer.

She says yes so quietly and so shocked he almost thinks he made it up in his head.

/

Childbirth is, unsurprisingly, the hardest thing she’s ever done. It’s hours there just in pain, trying to keep herself together. Tony’s there, still, hidden under so many jackets it was hard to hug him properly. The paranoia of anyone knowing about the arc past her, Obadiah, and Rhodey had been enough. He hadn’t gone out in public enough to worry about it until now.

The pain and the tears and the constant gossip of journalists trying to get a scoop on Tony Stark’s ‘miracle’ baby are worth it when they see her. Eighteen inches, six pounds, a tuft of dark hair on her head and light blue eyes staring up at the both of them. It’s easier to believe things will be perfect then, that they’ll both be fine and the company won’t get in the way. Tony still looks like he’s going to cry when he sees his daughter. Between Howard and the Ten Rings and everything else that’d happened, he had to win this one. He had to be good at it. His daughter had to be the happiest child on the planet.

Pepper had already cried. During labor, after labor, and now when Tony does. They never named her, the conversation always dangling between them due to the other always being tired. The life of a Stark. So now, with the surprise of it being a daughter and them both crying, neither can choke out a suggestion or even ask if the other had one. It’s hours before they do.

“Lucille.”

Tony looks up from his hospital cafeteria food (too worried to leave them alone, and none of his bodyguards ever got his order right) and weighs what his fiancé just said. A moment later he looks down at his daughter, fast asleep in Pepper’s arms. They’re both exhausted. Pepper obviously moreso than him, but it’d been hard enough to drag himself out of the stupor he’d been in and to the hospital.

“Perfect.” Tony whispers, taking Pepper’s hand and leaning his face against it. “Lucille Ball?”

A smile spreads across his face. They both needed the humor, despite Pepper rolling her eyes at him.

/

The suits are too much. Throughout it all, she wasn’t able to deal. It’d been an hour before the party when she’d gone to check on him and walked in on all of her partner’s robots balancing him like a crowd surfing lunatic in a titanium bodysuit. She’d almost decided not to go, but she couldn’t not with Tony AWOL. In the same branch, she still had no solid enough reasoning to tell him not to come to his own party, especially with the good the CEO’s face could do for the company.

It doesn’t make her any less stressed when Tony’s dancing with her across the floor.

“You look amazing.” Tony tells her, and it’s genuine. Even past his flirting charm from years ago it was always genuine when it came to her.   
“I feel fat.”   
“Gorgeous.”

Tony corrects her, smile on his face, and she’d be lying if she told anyone it didn’t effect her. Pepper raises where her hand is on his suit and leans closer in so no one could hear them speak. Even under the circumstances of her fear about whatever Tony was doing, it was nice to see him in the public again. It was where he was at his best - regardless how he’d been acting lately.

“The press will have a field day if they ever find out what you’re doing.”

She argues it even without knowing what he was doing herself. Tony snickers, shakes his head. There were still scratch marks across his face and Pepper could only assume from his experimenting with that thing, but well hidden with makeup for the event.

“I have a solution.” he starts. “You be CEO.”

She hates when he suggests things like this. She hates being caught off guard. Tony takes his hand from her side to lift his finger up to signal her stopping.

“Nobody wants me in the spotlight. I don’t want me in the spotlight, now. You’re the one who’s out here for months now, shaking hands and kissing babies other than your own and being the company face. You.”

He doesn’t put in the part where he might be dying. After Lucille’s birth and everything else, and now him putting this on her, he couldn’t stress her more. In the most idealistic scenario Tony fades out and somehow Pepper never notices, living a happy life with their daughter as he’d forgotten and can’t ruin a thing.

/

Tony listens to Coulson explain his cover story with as little attention as possible. He could just read it off the cards, especially with his mind swimming about all the other aspects of his life and the ripple effects this would have on all of it. Pepper handles the finer details without being asked, as she’s always done, as she enjoyed. Lucille’s birth hadn’t stopped her workaholic attitude in the least, just made Tony stand up for more and made Pepper more blatantly exhausted.

“All ready?” she asks when Coulson leaves, one hand in his hair the way she knew he liked.

Tony looks up at her, then stares at Lucille in her baby carrier a few feet away. He doesn’t do anything but nod. Pepper repeats the action and walks to get his jacket, helping him into it while he keeps the cards with Coulson’s speech between his teeth.

“Excited to be married to the one and only Iron Man?” he jokes. It isn’t needed for anyone but himself, but Pepper smirks anyway.   
“You’re not.”   
“Am so.”   
“You are _not_.”   
“Suit yourself.”

Pepper reluctantly smiles again, placing her hands on Tony’s chest when he turns around.

“I know you are. The world doesn’t need to.”

The validation and affection in the phrase almost makes Tony’s teeth rot. Pepper goes to say something else but Tony kisses her instead, hand on her hip. Did he buy her that pantsuit too? It's hard to remember at this point. Both of them are smiling when they pull away.

“Will _she_ know?” he asks.

His tone his joking but it's a genuine question for him. Squatting down to the floor, he points a finger into his daughter's baby carrier and she wraps her tiny hand around it. The two of them had become the only things that made him genuinely happy without consequence. Flying in the suit elated him, but he was living the consequences right now. Tony would still do it ten times over if it kept Lucille and Pepper safe, and he thinks Pepper knows that.

“Of course she will.” Pepper tells him.

Tony feels her hand on his arm and a kiss to his temple a moment later. Pepper baits Lucille into grabbing her finger with her free hand.

“Your daddy's Iron Man, sweetheart.”

Tony grins.


End file.
